Ruhollah Khomeini

Ruhollah Khomeini was a senior Shia cleric who spent years in exile as the leading religious opponent of the Shah of Iran, then returned in 1979 to lead the revolution that replaced the monarchy with an Islamic republic. As its first supreme leader until his death in 1989, he shaped a system of clerical rule that still governs Iran. Revered by supporters for reviving Islam's political role and asserting Iran's independence, he is criticised by others for the repression and mass executions carried out under his rule.

Khomeini was born in the small town of Khomeyn, south-west of Tehran, on 17 May 1900 according to his birth certificate, though a brother gave a date in 1902. His father was murdered when Ruhollah was about two, and he was raised by his mother and aunt. From 1920 he studied under Abdolkarim Haeri Yazdi, following him to the seminary city of Qom, where he became a respected teacher of law, philosophy and mysticism. His first political book, in 1942, condemned Reza Shah's ban on the veil.

When Mohammad Reza Shah launched his White Revolution reforms in 1963, including land reform and votes for women, Khomeini denounced them as an attack on Islam. A fiery speech in Qom on 3 June 1963 led to his arrest two days later, followed by riots in which some 400 people died. After he condemned legal immunity for American military personnel in 1964, he was sent into exile, first to Turkey and from 1965 to the Shia shrine city of Najaf in Iraq. There, in lectures in 1970, he set out the doctrine of guardianship of the Islamic jurist, velayat-e faqih, under which a senior cleric should rule.

As protests against the Shah grew in 1978, Iraq expelled Khomeini, and he directed the movement from a village outside Paris. The Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, and on 1 February Khomeini returned to Tehran to a vast welcome, by some reports up to five million people. The old government soon collapsed, and in a referendum at the end of March about 98 per cent voted for an Islamic republic. A new constitution, approved by referendum late in 1979, created the post of supreme leader for Khomeini. Meanwhile, in November 1979 students occupied the US embassy and held 52 Americans for 444 days; Khomeini backed the hostage crisis, which strengthened the hardliners.

Khomeini then turned on his former allies: liberals, leftists and the People's Mujahedin were driven out, and the revolutionary courts executed many officials of the old regime. Islamic dress codes were enforced, alcohol and most Western films banned, and education Islamised in a cultural revolution. Reported executions between 1981 and 1985 run to some 8,000 to 10,000. In 1988, after a Mujahedin incursion from Iraq, Khomeini ordered the trial of political prisoners, and thousands were put to death; estimates range from 1,000 to 30,000. Bahá'ís were also persecuted. A 2024 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran classed the 1981–82 killings and the 1988 executions as genocide against political and religious minorities.

In September 1980 Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, starting the Iran–Iraq War. By 1982 Iran had recovered almost all its lost territory. Khomeini then rejected a truce and demanded Saddam's overthrow; the war dragged on, with volunteers, including children, used in human-wave attacks. In July 1988 he accepted a UN-brokered ceasefire, likening it to drinking poison. In early 1989 he issued a fatwa calling for the death of the India-born British novelist Salman Rushdie over his novel The Satanic Verses.

Khomeini died on 3 June 1989 after a series of heart attacks, and his funeral drew millions of mourners. Ali Khamenei succeeded him after Khomeini had dismissed his designated heir, Hossein-Ali Montazeri, a critic of the 1988 executions. In Iran he is honoured as Imam and his tomb is a shrine; abroad he became the best-known face of the Iranian Revolution.

Our 1985 map shows Iran as the Islamic Republic during Khomeini's rule, at war with neighbouring Iraq.